


A Pot of Tea

by Vinvalen



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:03:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3135434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinvalen/pseuds/Vinvalen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignette, in which Cid proves he is something of a philosopher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pot of Tea

“Why do you like tea so much?” Vincent asked, surprising himself with the fact he’d never asked before. He watched closely as Cid went through his rather elaborate brewing ritual; the pilot had his own ways of doing things, most of which were as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. This was one of them.

No kettle other than the copper one with the dented crease in its side would do. This one had been with Cid since his cadet days, found abandoned by its previous owner in the locker Cid had been assigned at ShinRa. It had since become a permanent fixture on board his airship, until it had gone down with the Highwind. 

Afterward, it was Nanaki who found the pieces within the wreck, knowing how much the kettle meant to Cid. Now, there was a careful line of solder where the pilot painstakingly reattached its spout, and a new handle just as carefully crafted. It looked quite literally as if it had been through a war… and it had.   
The kettle had served Sephiroth and Genesis and Angeal when he’d known them as friends, in the days when he’d ferried them the length and breadth of a world.

And then there was the tea Cid favored; it too had its story. 

Cid’s return travels from Wutai were accompanied by cases of it during the war, contraband he’d smuggled across continents. The tea was grown in Wutai’s southernmost province on a plantation that had been owned by the same family for generations. The blend of leaves used was a closely guarded secret and had been favored at the table of emperors.

All during the war, the plantation itself had remained untouched though battles had been fought all around it. It was even rumored that a certain Silver General had come to an understanding with the plantation’s owners, not due to the tea’s unquestionable value, but because the owners freely offered it to his troops during the worst heat of Wutai’s summer. 

Whatever the truth of the matter, the smuggled tea found its way to far-flung destinations and the plantation owners prospered. 

But for there to be good tea, there must be good water. In a small hollow deep within Cosmo Canyon, there was a spring and as Cid said, “the water there tastes like Gaia’s own self…and ya gotta treat tea with the respect it deserves.” 

Few things captured the pilot’s heart in such a manner, Vincent mused, the way the light played in storms, danced upon the waves of the ocean as the airship passed above, across the mountain peaks just as the sun rose. The wheel steady and responsive to the slightest touch of his hand, a clear night of countless stars where the possibility of choosing only one to steer by seemed impossible. The pilot wandered that night sky, seas of grass or sand catching his fleeting shadow, teacup in hand, content with his world. 

And then there were the cups.

In the ShinRa manor, Cid found an abandoned tea set, pulling it from an equally dusty, forgotten cupboard just as Cloud called urgently from somewhere below, wanting him to witness his own discovery.

He’d taken the cups afterward, abandoning the rest of the service as impractical. Call it sentiment, but for Cid, those teacups and Vincent would be forever entwined in the pilot’s mind. Of the original dozen, ten remained. 

Two had been lost with the Highwind. Two more met their fate by accident but their shards had been gathered to the smallest fragment and painstakingly glued back together. They were now safely ensconced within an antique, glass-fronted cabinet in Cid’s kitchen at Rocket Town. This same cabinet, one Cid’s grandfather had built, housed the remainder, all but the two which always traveled with the pilot wherever he went. 

Sun and rain and wind and snow and laughter and grief… across a world and back again.

Vincent was pulled from his musings when Cid answered. “Well, it’s like this…” he replied, watching his kettle for just the right moment. The pilot said he could always tell by the curl of the rising steam from its spout. “It kinda grows on ya. We never had coffee back in the cadet days, but we had tea an' this old kettle. Lotsa long nights, longer days, good times, bad times…an' somehow all of it is wound up in this old thing. I reckon,” Cid said as he and Vincent touched their cups together gently, enjoying their quiet chime, “that tea tastes like life. Ya got the bitter an' the sweet, an' if ya got the right mix an' somebody to share it with, there ain’t nothin’ any finer.”

Vincent couldn’t agree more.


End file.
